Treynor’s Mascot Merch to pitch equipment plan at REV

Adam Magill of Treynor will ask the judges at REV Pitch 2026 for equipment that would let his custom apparel business do its own printing. Magill, who runs Mascot Merch, is one of five finalists who will present Thursday, Nov. 5, at PACE’s Hoff Family Arts & Culture Center. More than $21,000 in prize money is at stake. Tickets are $15 and are available at tsbank.com/rev.

Magill’s wife started the business in 2018 after a Treynor coach complained that team orders from outside companies kept coming back with misspelled names. She already owned a heat press and decided she could do better. Magill took over production and the business side in 2021, when she returned to full-time teaching. She teaches kindergarten in the Treynor schools, and he has been pastor at Zion Church in Treynor for more than 16 years. “We know the kids, we know the people,” Magill said. The business slogan is “Gear up and give back.”

That giving has included fundraisers. Last year, when a Treynor girl was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor, Mascot Merch made T-shirts that raised more than $2,500 for her family within a few weeks. Magill said the money was only part of it. “All of a sudden, the entire town was wearing these shirts,” he said. The business is now working with the community group Treynor’s Tomorrow on a shirt to raise money for its projects.

Magill said Mascot Merch has grown about as far as it can with its current setup. He now has to send out full-color designs to be printed, and when an order comes back wrong, he waits another two or three days for a fix. That has forced him to turn down rush orders, such as shirts for Treynor teams headed to state tournaments. His REV pitch asks for a direct-to-film printer with startup supplies and a double pneumatic heat press. He said the printer would let him make full-color transfers in the shop, and the press would cut production time about in half. With both, he said, a customer could design a shirt and walk out with it in under 10 minutes.

The family also plans to move the business into a family-owned warehouse at the four corners on Treynor’s Main Street. The building would be divided into three retail spaces, each 20 feet wide and 30 feet deep, with Mascot Merch as the anchor. Because the family owns the building, Magill said, the business would not pay monthly rent. The front of the shop would be a retail area where customers could order anything from a family reunion shirt to a one-off joke shirt.

Magill said Treynor has a long history of people building something for themselves, going back to the German Lutheran immigrants who settled there. He said someone once told him that the town’s biggest blessing and its biggest challenge are the same thing: it is 15 minutes from Council Bluffs and Omaha. “The businesses that have really done well in Treynor,” he said, “it’s the businesses that really have focused on the people.”